


White Raven

by Ireg



Category: Original Work
Genre: Gen, Lovecraftian, Symbolism, Unreliable Narrator
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-11
Updated: 2018-05-14
Packaged: 2019-04-21 08:07:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,781
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14280651
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ireg/pseuds/Ireg
Summary: A girl on a train, with not even herself. She hears drumming with the fog all around her.A herald of the ardent.





	1. A girl, lost in the fog.

**Author's Note:**

> Very much a work in progress- I've got a basic idea, and there will definitely be more characters but all we've got is Para for now. Just the first chapter, so hold tight. I've got a plan, I swear.

The fog is suffocating.

But it's all i’ve known.

Burning. Bleeding. Blossoming.

Sometimes, I feel a tingle, deep in the back of my mind. It’s a tiny jolt, a faint pricking of deja vu. Did I know a time before? It seems to dampen everything- Memories, sensation, and awareness. I’ve heard rumors that it can rob even your consciousness, but they are only fluttering, whispering butterflies darting around my head like all conversation seems to be. They attribute everything to the fog: it could just be regular death.

Brimstone. Cacophony. No- Steady drumming. Slow, incessant. I’m brought back to myself, even if I still feel five feet away. The colors all blurring together as I blink, lavish reds with gold trim: its all faded. Is it physical, or just my eyesight? The fog is more like smoke now, curling wisps of ether trailing and worming from hue to hue.

Breathe in. Breathe in….

My throat feels like it's lined with sandpaper. Was that the fog? Steady. Steady now. Take inventory. I lift my eyes to my arm. Continue my mental journal, count every rubber band on my fingers. All vibrant colors, all tokens to remember. They seem duller than I remember. How long ago was that?

Brown. It reminds me of the horrid wallpaper in Auntie’s apartment. Flowers more like carrion than blooms.

I’m on a train. This is the luxury cabin- Why am I here? Think. Think. Listen.

The drumming bleeds into the chugging of a train. The colors churn into the outline of an eloquent prison.

Blue. No, teal. It’s like the balloon that said I was going to have a baby brother. It floats off endlessly, now trapped in my void of thought. Only a dot against the black.

I’m riding to the sea. The c. The see. I run that word over in my head, echo it in my mouth. Feel it vibrate through every end of my body. I remember the sea, at least. It was a vast blanket, a comforting pillow of refreshment. I remember it on the television when they talked about the fog for the first time. Mom loved the sea, but Auntie rooted us as central as she could, so far from the water on all sides. How can you escape something that surrounds you? Chokes you.

I finally start to hear the passengers. They’re staring. At my disheveled hair? At the wild dullness in my eyes? At the decaying rainbow laced on my fingers? I can’t quite tell.

Salmon. I wonder if they serve salmon- the color almost invades my taste and satisfies it. Do I have the money? I’ll have to find the green band. One at a time-

I’m travelling for work. The other senses begin to seep into me and I squeeze the bands to stay focused. Dangerous work. Herald.

White.

It's like a key to a box no one wanted to open. Like when I opened the letter. Like when they opened the coffin.

My name is Para Preter. 

No.

One.

Knows.

I unwind my eyes from the bands. All the senses are back now, recovered from myself. I breathe in and taste the decay of the fog like a long lost friend. This is the dining cabin- I stare rightward, into the darkened window, puppeting myself and marveling at every movement.

I look like shit.

I’m not sure if anyone has ever called me pretty, but i’m sure it's impossible that someone hasn’t. Even if something lacks a quality in every way, the comparison will be made eventually. It's an inevitability, with the fallibility of disparity. Mom must have, or even Auntie. I don't have a band for that. I might have a card for that.

My hair is a dry mop tousled all over, brown like the wallpaper or like the soft mud below the black dresses. My eyes are like wells, drowning and obfuscated and unmistakably blue. Freckles are smattered like tiny potholes, and my pink tee with an elephant stained onto it hangs limply off my gangly limbs. I want to look away but the fire around me and the abyss outside avert my senses, leaving me only with Para Preter.

I sigh, hearing my coarse voice grate against my ears. I shouldn’t be surprised- That was the yellow band. It was a sallow yellow, like rotting squash, and I swore it was brighter when I bought the parcel of vibrance, but the meaning was all the same. “You look like a degenerate.” Or something. I have a pitiful relationship with my past and future selves, a bickering charade that continues for all eternity.

Finally, I peer out into the abyss, matching the emptiness in my wells with the emptiness in the foggy oracle. Even then, the surface mocks me, casting my reflection in irritating brightness while I press my chapped flesh against the surface, feeling every shred of coolness I can. I’m still burning up, sweltering, even if my body dies for heat.

More whisperings from my audience. At least they don’t have that name. Maybe i’ll choose another- Maybe i’ll just let myself forget. Maybe i’ll just lull backwards….

Everything slips away, once again. It's only my eyes, and not even my eyes, and the fog and the sea. Teetering on a thin strip of cardboard above a maw of prickling softness. Watching all the bands blend into fog. Words shattering and clumping.

Para Preter.

Ardent.

Herald.

Fog.

Sea.

Maybe i’ll let it just take me this time.

And then it's back again. That dreadful conscience. That dreadful binding holding me. That dreadful sensation.

It all ebbs back, faster this time, working catch-up as my frail form snatches every scrap up greedily. The train is on a bridge- It pierces forever into the horizon, rambling on and on. Below me is the sea, but the sun is gone and the orange band is gone and all I see is the black pudding sloshing and reflecting Para Preter back into me….

I blink. Green- I have money. Lots, of money. Black bills and red coins, not in color but in aspect…. The next band. Where did it come from? Where did it…..

“Excuse me, miss?” The attendant was genial, but he held that mask as you might hold a broken one. Irritation warped around the cracks and I suppose he was right. A girl wandering into a dining cabin, only to slip into spells of not-sleep and not order a single morsel, rousing to take bewildered glances at her hands before settling down again. At least, that’s how i’d think it would have gone.

“Hey.” I offer. I offer it like I offer anything, as best I can even if I know its always never enough and it always has another price and I can never seem to-

He seems taken aback by that, almost as if he expected me to stare blankly as I had to every other passerby. Maybe some part of Para Preter would look closer at his face, hear his voice. But he’s just another lightbulb to a shadow.

“Are you going to order something?”

I swallow, mental seconds drifting away as I number every moment on the hypothetical social clock of aggravation. What food did I like? What band was that…. Red… No, no… Oran-

I can taste his impatience. It’s like smoky asparagus, bitter and smooth and tough all at the same time. The clock is up. Its chime shares a companion in the void with the balloon and a thousand other careless trinkets.

“Asparagus. And Salmon.” I croak out, fumbling with my hand and running fingers across every band- They’re all here. All here….. All here.

His eyes are like the reflections on the window. I can see Para Preter glistening in them, reflected a thousand times in different light- but all black. The look of bewilderment from my seemingly random choice oozes out from the chipped mask, paired with relief: relief to be away from me. It's all the same.

Its fine.

No one wants to be with anyone. That’s the default. 

He rushes off with a refined scamper. I wonder if Para Preter talked with him before this. I wonder what Para Preter would think of me. I wonder if i'm even important enough for her to remember.

I’m alone again, but not. There are figments around me, pale and intangible; they talk like its yesterday.

A person without a name is a figment.

I wish I was a figment and I could fly away.

People say time is like a stream, but it's more like the sea. It flows in, and out. Wears away at the shore- And it can drown you.

I was drowned while I waited. It swallowed me up and I wanted to not-sleep again.

He returned shortly, at least in the purely literal sense- But not. Just another figment. I could taste the whimsy fluttering of his words, like electricity on my teeth. He’s gone before I know it, but he was never there. All he was is a plate of salmon and asparagus.

I begin to eat, but it's all wrong. All muddled again by the fog: I call one name and a different name answers. I hear the tang of the salmon and I see it’s taste. Its fulfilling, but not like before. It won't ever be like before.

I need a band.

* * *

  
  


_ I have the keys, and the locks. _

_ But there’s nothing I want to open. _


	2. The White Raven

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A girl coiled in purple and blue.
> 
> A child, lost with a white raven at her shoulder.

Somehow, I feel more alive in dreams.

Maybe its because the fog is gone, and I feel that I can really cherish colors again, savoring every orange and blue like I never lost them. Maybe it's because all my senses are distinct, isolated in order rather than jumbled into a chaotic mess. And maybe it’s because I can remember, even if im only left helplessly fumbling for any understanding as soon as I wake.

Entering consciousness is like being submerged in a pool of jello. Suddenly, I can't tell up from down or brown from blue. Sometimes I wonder if this is the real dream, and the real Para Preter only exists in sleep.

Sometimes I wonder if i’m the nightmare she wants to forget.

The sunrise is bittersweet saccharine on my senses. I can taste the orange on every bud of my tongue, and it's almost like the orange band that i’ve lost for so long is here. But it’s all wrong- it tastes artificial, like orange sorbet instead of honey drops in an earthy tea with the wind in my hair.

Maybe it's the fog. The sun is strangled through it, and all I hear is its last choked gasps as it escapes into the bedroom, splitting and fragmenting and fulminating in so many directions.

The room is cramped; a thin strip of space on the hallway adjacent to me, with a bed flatter than my personality, a welded down nightstand that rattles slightly with every gasping wheeze from the train, and a TV across from my sleeping position that glints back at me with another image of Para Preter. I feel like i'm locked in a coffin bobbing gently with the sea all around, but the room has nothing to do with that.

What will I do today?

The TV whispers, and I whisper back. Maybe i’d use it to pass the time and dull the risk of falling into the not-sleep again, but every false color and light it wields is like a needle on my brain- a remembering needle.

The worst kind of needle.

There is a faint knock on the door. Strong, hard and forceful; but in sound, it is only a whimper. I can hear purple in the air, and I know this knock’s power is not from physical strength, but a sheer, and bitter force of will.

I might have lost that knock, if it were any other; the not-sleep had already begun to wind and curl around my thoughts, and even the most profound pounding would not have dispelled it. But this one invaded what was left of my awareness, with its stinging oddity.

I briefly considered shriveling up and clumping against the wall. I don’t have to talk, and they’re just another figment.. I’m another figment. I can just fade away.

Another knock. It steals my breath like a seafaring wind. Even this knock is everything i'm not.

Step. Step. Step. Knock. Knock. Knock. They’re dueling tunes against each other, razors against my ears. 

At the door.

Breathe in. Breathe out. The knob is a sparkling sapphire swept into a snowdrift by the sea. I grasp it, and a thousand clocks shatter.

* * *

 

_ Open. _

_ I’ve used another key. _

_ I should never use the keys. _

* * *

 

She seems to freeze the air around her. Freeze the room around her. Freeze the world around her. Freeze time around her.

Freeze the fog around her.

A child. She’s half my height, but still seems to be twice my size. She must be ten, or eleven, or twelve, or…. There’s an twinkling knowledge in her eyes that I don’t see even in adults.

Eyes less like the abyss and more like the fire. I have to look down to peer into them- They’re blue, almost purple, and crackling with fervor. A bonnet of icy blonde hair flows around her, and her thin frame wears a tailored coat and skirt more fit for a noblewoman rather than a lost child. She stares at me with shrewd scrutiny among all her features- I’m under a thousand spotlights to her eye as she peels away at me, as I feel every piece flake away.

“Para Preter?”

I die.

I can feel spinning, and twisting. Warping, and reeling; everything becomes a single line. She gobbles up every moment, savoring how I flutter and fade while she holds me captive in this moment.

I stay silent, worlds curled and clumped in my throat, caught in a traffic jam of sounds and characters and symbols and meaning. Hearing those two omens together leaves white in the air, and all the while there is a slight tug on the edge of her lips, like an intangible spider pulling marionette strings on them.

“Yes?” Only a single word escapes alive from a massacre of ideas and responses. I try to fade away, but her smile tastes like amusements and I know she sees me.

I’m no longer a figment.

“I’ve found your name on a register- We both happen to be applying for the same role, Herald Emissary. Isn’t that just the most delightful coincidence?” Every word, stained with malice. Every sincerity, just orange painted over the red.

As I flounder in the silence and grasp for anything I can, her smile only stretches further. It's a blotched and blurry red line across her face.

“Sure.” It sounds as hollow as the woman in the box’s eyes as I stared down at her, as fake as the sympathy in the hushed words from the black suits and dresses, but its all I can muster.

It doesn’t matter.

She’s found me out.

Her smile exposes a tundra of frozen pearls, looking like a child finding a new toy to play with, but with an uncanny glint of purple behind the chilly wasteland of her irises that makes me feel like the child.

“Wonderful. Why don’t we discuss this later, somewhere more… Visionary? I find the horizon of muffled sunrise coupled with a canvas of cool blue quite the atmosphere for the mood of this subject, wouldn’t you agree?”

She knows I have to answer. She knows every response makes me squirm, and she delights as I wriggle, like an ant caught in a magnifying glass.

“Sure.” It’s tedious. Its repetitive, its dull and unoriginal. But when hasn’t that been what I am? I’m a word repeated into itself, i’m two letters side by side. The only time i'm surprising is when i surprise myself.

“Great. Well then, Para…” She pauses, expectantly waiting as I flinch, the name sending bolts of white through me. “See you soon. I’m sure you’ll… Find me.” She ends her ploy with a wink, slipping away ever so slowly.

I’m left with a taste of fiery peppermint tingling all my senses, and a feeling of ultimate exposure, like my skin had a plastic transparence and you could see every color of my soul as easily as you could see every tremble of my skin. The fog compels into action as she leaves, winding an errant story of somberness within the air.

She froze the train around her, but maybe she has finally compelled me to action.

But I don’t want to move.

Shaky breaths. Hesitant breaths. Windy breaths, like the one that tickles the top of tremulous tides, riding them as an airy passenger. Laced with streaks of blue like comforting hands laced through my hair, it blows away gaps of fog, if only for a time.

On the floor, where that polar poltergeist has just stood was a tiny speck of white, a drop of her domain left here, white but dotted with tiny black spiders that crawl along and whisper meaning to me. They’re like the raven on the letter, or the dresses by the lace, hints of emptiness that I wish would lash out and consume the white.

Algia Latry.

The spiders are grains of sand falling into place to form a greater whole, they give a name to a figment centered in a card. It’s frilled with gold, red and finally purple,  who hides behind the curtain. A white raven perches in the corner, nestled in a bed of embroidered roses. Its drawn like a dove, but there’s shrill predation surrounding it that casts it in white shadows, shadows like the ones around the letter or that name. 

I’d claim that she left the card on accident, but glacial drafts and their airy, if bitter winds are never random.

No, the card was placed for a very specific purpose. I think maybe i’d have forgotten it if it were anywhere else- a name does not make a name, so long as they dance lightly along my scalp, only to exit. Letters on billboard or tags, colors in the air only browns and greens when they’re spoken. What is a name, if not remembered?

A blessing.

Finally alone, at least until the white raven beckons me. I fumble with the bands, and each one is a valley of memory and meaning between my fingers, even more than there is between my mind.

Purple was a wild lavender field, swaying and dancing with every billow. Now it’s velvet satin, bound to an encrusted dagger handle. Feeling the rubber on the band is like watching I movie I have a thousand times before.

Drifting…

Away….

* * *

 

It may seem impossible, but I was once a butterfly, aimless, and whimsy.

 

Now I have become a caterpillar underneath the weight.

Para Preter was a girl, lost in a concrete jungle. Wandering for a place that would tell her what the colors and the gaps meant.

The streets were cobbled, interlaced with strips of darker and lighter stone that complimented complex patterns. Patterns that crept from the ground to the walls of homes around, bleeding from the flattened walkway to chiseled facades. Splitting down the center of the road was a deep canal, enveloped with clear water darkened by the depressing colors of the city around it, blacks and grays encompassing all.

On each side were the shops, stores, and offices, varying places for varying purposes. But all maintained the dark colors and stone faces, with gargoyles and spiraling stonework sparkling in a pleasant midday sun, so contrasted to gothic inspirations seeded everywhere. Despite the foreboding atmosphere, brilliant verdancy was stuffed in every narrow cranny, not only in the many cracks within the stones, but also in pots set out in window sills. The flora extended to both levels of the alley, with green radiance sometimes dotted with smaller colors present on every balcony. Waterfalls flow down small slits within the fronts of shops and homes, or even spill gently off roofs glistening with water secreted from similar facets, all pooling within the canal.

The alley was sheltered from the sun, with the only hint of its existence seen from looking above from the lowly pedestrian space to the iron and stone wrought balconies of the second stories basking in its glow. Despite this, you could still feel a profound humidity choked in your throat, water extending not just from the slits in the buildings but also the air itself.

Para Preter strolled inquisitively along, devouring the oddly tropical atmosphere within the green pits within her eyes, kin to the foliage fluttering beside her. She let her hand run beside her, grasping through the leaves and across small waterfalls, breaking their endless cycle if only for a moment.

I think she was wearing a blue shirt that day, but every color seems enveloped in purple for the moment being. On that assumption, it was a blue shirt with a lighter blue butterfly, right wing torn. The emblem itself was whole, but a pocketed gash in the material gave it that appearance. The material was light, but it still clung to her- This heat, and this humidity, was deathly. Even in only a T-shirt and shorts, she could feel it swirl around her.

Hearing these woes, they seem insubstantial. Better only red and water cloud the air, then fog. 

Para Preter had a wild, yet whole atmosphere to her, such a verdant aura that her veins seemed roots, eyes seemed spring pools and voice a scratchy, if strangely soothing melody; leaves in the wind, heavy footfalls against a beaten wooded path, or blossoms whispering between themselves.

She halted her spritely step before a building completely distinct from the aesthetic dispersed throughout the alley. No stones, no foliage, just an eloquent face, red plaster with gold trim and purple accents. A festering boil against everything around it. Para’s eyes were narrowed with subtle accusation, but a depth of curiosity fluttered within them, centered on this seed of decay before her.

The door was a portal of poisoned purple, lavender lost in wine and velvet. So articulate, with gold flowers all with jagged edges, and red lines, bloody tears from them. But at the center of it all, a white raven, smiling crooked in past and present.

* * *

 

_ A scramble, a scamper, a scat.  _

_ A doodle, a drabble, a drat. _

 

_ Bleeding lines and blurred edges. _

_ I see colors in every image. _

_ Gaps between the labyrinth hedges. _

_ Life is just an afterimage. _

 

_ A bubble, a battle, I cant. _


End file.
